Monday, December 21, 2015

Understanding International Anti-Corruption Measures in Honduras

photo courtesy flickr user rbreve

They called themselves
the Indignados, “The Outraged,” and
they took to Honduras’ streets by the thousands in June of 2015 when it became clear that the current
President’s campaign had received funds stolen from the Honduran state.

The funds came from
the Honduran Social Security Institute (IHSS), an entity charged with providing
public health in Honduras. As much as $330 million was pilfered by corrupt officials, Insight Crime reported, who
used back-room deals, overvalued contracts, and political maneuvering to steal desperately-needed
money while Honduran people died in hospitals for lack of medicines
and equipment.

The fact that the
corrupt companies donated $150,000 of the stolen money to Honduran president
Juan Orlando Hernandez’s political campaign in 2013 further enraged the Indignados, who called for his
impeachment. Hernandez denied any knowledge of the source of the funds, and
promised to return the money, but this did little to garner trust with the
protesting groups.

His political party,
the Nationalists, had taken power from the opposition in 2009 in a military
coup, and for some people, marching in the streets became a way to protest
this, to protest the unthinkably high levels of violence and drug activity in
Honduras, to protest the rampant corruption that made theft on such a grand
level possible.

The marches were
unavoidably political. Mel Zelaya, the president who had been ousted and would
later become a de facto leader of the new leftist “LIBRE” party, was seen marching
in the rallies. Popular sportscaster-turned-politician Salvador Nasralla, who
ran against Hernandez in 2013 for the new Anti-Corruption Party, would become a
vocal supporter of the marchers’ demands.

Besides the removal of
the president, the Indignados had a
specific request. On signs held up in protests or words spray-painted onto walls,
they claimed, “We want the CICIH”.

What they wanted was a
CICIG, Comisión Internacional Contra la
Impunidad Guatemala (International Commission against Impunity in
Guatemala) – but in Honduras.

CICIG was created in
2006 through an agreement between the United Nations and the Guatemalan
government. Funded through U.N. partner states, the independent, international
entity supports state institutions by investigating emblematic cases of
corruption, filing criminal complaints, and joining criminal proceedings as a
private prosecutor[1].

At the same time as
the Honduran IHSS case was unfolding, the CICIG was filing cases in Guatemala
against their current political regime. These cases implicated dozens of
officials up to and including the president and vice-president for involvement
in a huge corruption ring out of the tax and customs department.

Protests also broke
out in the streets of Guatemala, calling for the resignation of the political
leaders. In May,
2015, Vice-president Roxana Baldetti stepped down
under pressure from the CICIG and the Attorney General’s office. In August,
Baldetti was sought for arrest, and the President of Guatemala, Otto Perez
Molina, was sought for impeachment. He was impeached on September 1st,
resigned rather than face an impeachment trial, and was immediately taken into
custody to face charges.

People in Honduras
were looking for similarly dramatic results.

By September, the
torchlight marches had waned, and the Indignados
movement began to fade. Progress was moving slowly on the IHSS case – out
of 40 charged, only one had reached a conviction. In October, José Ramón
Bertetty, the financial manager of IHSS, was charged on one of his multiple
counts of abuse of authority, fraud, and misuse of public funds. The Director
of IHSS, along with other high-ranking officials, are still awaiting trial.

Observers would have
liked swifter, more decisive convictions, but even this much rule of law was
unprecedented. The accusations followed a string of high-profile arrests. Reports
by Asociación para una Sociedad más Justa (ASJ) exposed corruption in medical
purchasing and warehousing that led to then-vice-president of Congress Lena
Gutierrez being charged with corruption, along with her politically powerful family. Ten
Honduran nationals were extradited to the United States to face charges for
drug trafficking. Honduran ex-President Rafael Callejas was extradited to stand
trial for corruption related to FIFA.

The increasing will of
the Honduran Public Ministry to process corruption cases, however, is
limited by inadequate budgets, historically inefficient management, and other procedural
difficulties. A “CICIH” could potentially offer the support, independent
investigation, and oversight that the Public Ministry needs to process the cases that are
coming to light.

But creating a copy of
CICIG in Honduras would be difficult. CICIG had been working in Guatemala for
nine years before it won the emblematic victory against the president and
vice-president. It is also a
particularly expensive program, ranging from $12 to 15 million per year.
Protesters demanding a copy of CICIG for Honduras, but also hoping for decisive
and immediate results in the lack of a clear funding source, were bound to be
disappointed. Furthermore, many observers say that a CICIG-equivalent, instead
of strengthening the legal institutions of Honduras, could actually create
dependency on a foreign unit of investigators and lawyers.

Another proposal
emerged. At the end of September, the secretary general of the Organization for
American States (OAS) announced a new initiative – MACCIH, La Misión de Apoyo contra la Corrupción y la Impunidad en Honduras
(the Mission to Support the Fight against Corruption and Impunity in Honduras).

The announcement of
the initiative, made in Washington D.C. with President Hernandez in attendance,
showed the real will of international organizations to partner with Honduras
against corruption. It was also notably different from the CICIG.

The initial proposal
for the creation of the MACCIH gave it a limited scope in the prosecution of
specific cases, instead installing it in a supporting role for the Honduran
justice system. An international body would, like the CICIG, support in the
investigation and prosecution of corruption cases. Unlike the CICIG, this body
would be composed of both national and international actors. The MACCIH would also
create a “diagnosis” of the state of the justice system in partnership with the
Center for the Study of Justice in Americas (CEJA), first offering recommendations
for improvement, and then acting as an international observer for their
implementation[2].

Proponents of the
draft praised a proposal that could support the Attorney General’s office in
obtaining immediate results, and for a much lower price than the CICIG ($1-2
million per year). Opponents called the MACCIH a face-saving effort of the
President to get out of a stricter CICIG- like proposal.

The Alliance for Peace
and Justice (APJ) sees the MACCIH as an overall positive movement, as long as
it has real autonomy and access to government information – provisions that are
left vague in the current draft. Statements published by organizations including
APJ, the Wilson Center, and representatives of the Indignados movement requested that a final draft contain language
that explicitly grants the MACCIH independence in its investigations and full
access to government information and personnel, as well as specifies that
MACCIH be led by a Head of Mission above reproach and with real authority.

“To squander this
opportunity by failing to put in place a meaningful body with teeth would be a
mistake,” wrote Eric L. Olsen and Katherine Hyde in a report for the Wilson
Center, “Simply signing a vague agreement in the hope of some future payoff is
no longer a viable alternative.”

The MACCIH proposal
has been through various revisions as OAS delegates met with various
stakeholders in the Honduran government and civil society. Nonetheless, a
scheduled December 10th signing of the agreement – set to happen in
Washington – was abruptly canceled to a later date in January.

This could be a sign
of political “cold feet” or the workings of further revision processes, but
civil society has committed to not letting the Mission be forgotten. By
continuing to discuss the needs of the Honduran people, there is hope that a
proposal could further the work that has already begun of chipping away the
corruption within Honduran systems.